The NFL is a copycat league like in all sports. Once the recipe is out there in the football world for how to prevail against your enemy, suddenly your own team gravitates to some changes. When the Philadelphia Eagles defense gave the Patrick Mahomes’ Kansas City Chiefs a beat down in this past Superbowl, you better believe it that general managers around the entire league took notice. Especially Brandon Beane, the GM of the Buffalo Bills. The Bills can’t clear that final hurdle to the Superbowl which is the Chiefs. It may not be the extra weapon Josh Allen needs on offense to get the job done versus the Chiefs. What Allen and the Bills need most is a guy that can help disrupt the flow of Mahomes and that Chiefs offense to put up another disastrous performance like he did last month. Could a game wrecker be possible for the Bills this off-season in a trade with Cleveland for defensive end Myles Garrett? Could the Bills simply sign Khalil Mack who is available in free agency? Would either one of these guys be the key to getting by the Chiefs?

Myles Garrett is unhappy in Cleveland and has demanded a trade. Garrett is 29 years old & has 8 seasons in the NFL all with the Browns who drafted number 1 overall in the 2017 NFL draft. In 117 games in the NFL Garrett is one of the best at killing the QB, as he racked up 102.5 sacks in his career so far. Last season he had 14 sacks in 17 games with 40 solo tackles and 3 forced fumbles. Garrett has been named defensive player of the year multiple times from different outlets over his career. He is also a six time Pro-Bowler. Khalil Mack was originally drafted by the Oakland Raiders in the 2014 NFL draft in the first round 5th overall. Mack is 34 years of age and has 11 seasons under his belt with the Raiders, Bears, and Chargers for the last few seasons. He has played in 167 career NFL games and has racked 107.5 sacks. Mack is a 9x Pro-Bowler and also has won multiple defensive player of the year awards. Last year he had only 6 sacks in 16 games and 20 solo tackles along with 2 forced fumbles. Mack has only 5 playoff games under his belt in his career as he tallied up 3 sacks in post-season play. While Garrett has one sack in three post-season games.

I would love to have Khalil Mack and Myles Garrett on my defense rushing from opposite ends. With Garrett you get a younger guy that has more octane in his tank than the old Mack truck. Garrett is like a crazed animal out there on the field and he can easily wreck your game plan. Only one time he used the quarterback’s helmet as a weapon of mass destruction on the the QB he took it from. He is not that guy who will cost you a game for losing his cool as he did that night with Mason Rudolf when he played for the Steelers. Garrett was drafted in 2017 and Josh Allen was drafted in 2018 which means the Bills’ top two guys on their respected units are about the same age. Allen is 28 while Garrett is 29. I remember when the Bears first landed Khalil Mack from the Raiders as he had no pre-season action and helped the Bears get back to the post-season. The Bears had one of the best defenses in the league. The Bears got there with Mitch Trubisky as the starting quarterback and they have moron Matt Nagy as the head coach. Mack was unstoppable that year as he had 12.5 sacks in his first season in a Bears uniform. Mack is a streaky kind of guy. Some years he can have monster numbers and some years like last year, he only had 6 sacks. It’s not like he has less effort as he could be getting double teamed. When you take on double teams, it should free up someone else on that defense that can create the havoc that week.

The bottom line is how much is it going to cost you to land one of these guys? Brandon Beane has pulled the trigger on landing a big player before. Right before the 2020 season Beane got Josh Allen, one of the top play makers in the league with Stefon Diggs. That trade was a bowl of mixed nuts for the Bills as they dealt Diggs to Houston before the 2024 season started. For the Browns who are being handcuffed by the biggest flop of a trade in NFL history they made by acquiring Deshaun Watson from Houston. They will certainly will ask a lot for a Myles Garrett. It will cost the Bills trade capital and chunks of salary cap to get Garrett. Other teams could drive the price up for Garrett as well. For Khalil Mack it is about how much does he want in his bank account. Will Mack take less at his age with a chance to go further in the post-season with the Bills than any other team he has played for in his career? Mack played his college ball with the University of Buffalo where he dominated. Could that be enough to entice him to come back and play in the cold weather after a few seasons in the LA sun?

These moves are always a doubled edge sword which can cut your own team more than help. When the Bills went out and signed Von Miller in 2022, it was supposed to be “MILLER TIME” in Buffalo instead of the normal Lablatt Blue. Last year Miller tallied up six sacks in 13 games as a guy who is 35 years of age. Giving Khalil Mack a big contract or big money next season at the age of 34 kind of makes me nervous. Miller should be a salary cap casualty coming up which will give the Bills more money to spend on the open market. The biggest question is does one guy make that much of a difference? The Eagles used the legs of Saquon Barkley to ride them all the way to the Superbowl. At the end it was the Eagles defense who won that Superbowl. The Eagles defense did it as a unit. If I had to pick out of Mack or Garrett, put me down for Myles over Khalil. Age makes a difference on the football field. If the Bills could land two impact free agents for the one price on that defense, then sign me up for that. I think Sean McDermott and the Bills may be heading to a different philosophy on the defensive side of the ball with some of the new hires as coaches on that side of the field. I would like to see some new horses in the trenches. I would like to see a shut down corner back as well. This Bills defense is not terrible. They already have some solid pieces in place. The Eagles defense has some of those names you probably heard the first time because of the Superbowl. Let’s keep the draft capital. Let’s invest in multiple needs for the entire roster and not put all our eggs in the single basket.